NASA’s Artemis 2 mission will send a crew of astronauts around the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years, marking a major moment in American spaceflight history. What better way to honor that history than to send a bunch of priceless mementos along for the ride?
The Artemis 2 flight kit will include several artifacts that reflect the nation’s longstanding dedication to aerospace innovation and exploration, NASA announced Wednesday. These items will fly with the crew inside the Orion spacecraft, launched atop the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. Artemis 2 will be the first crewed test flight of SLS and Orion—a critical stepping stone to a future lunar landing.
“This mission will bring together pieces of our earliest achievements in aviation, defining moments from human spaceflight, and symbols of where we’re headed next,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement. “During America’s 250th anniversary, Orion will carry astronauts around the Moon while also carrying our history forward into the next chapter beyond Earth.”
From the archives to deep space
The oldest of these aerospace artifacts dates back to the Wright brothers’ first powered flight in 1903. The Artemis 2 flight kit will contain 1 square inch (6.5 square centimeters) of muslin fabric from the original Wright Flyer, the world’s first powered, heavier-than-air flying machine.
The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum loaned the swatch of fabric to NASA for the Artemis 2 mission, but this isn’t the first time part of it will go to space. A smaller square cut of the fabric previously flew aboard Space Shuttle Discovery during the 1985 STS-51D mission.
Also flying aboard Artemis 2 will be a small American flag that rode along on the very first shuttle mission (STS-1), the final shuttle mission (STS-135), and NASA’s first crewed test flight of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. Another flag that was set to fly on the Apollo 18 mission before its cancellation in 1970 will finally make its long-delayed journey to space aboard Artemis 2.
The flight kit will also include a copy of a photo negative from the 1964 Ranger 7 mission, NASA’s first to successfully make contact with the lunar surface after 13 failed attempts. The robotic spacecraft beamed more than 4,300 images of the lunar surface back to Earth before intentionally crashing into the Moon, helping NASA identify safe landing sites for the Apollo astronauts.
Launching historical objects aboard NASA missions is a decades-old tradition. During the Artemis 1 mission, which sent Orion on an uncrewed flight around the Moon in 2022, the spacecraft carried several artifacts from the Apollo missions, including a Moon rock collected during the first lunar landing.
Countdown to launch
The stacked SLS and Orion spacecraft rolled onto the launchpad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on January 17. The agency is now in the final stages of launch preparations, with the first available window opening on February 6.
NASA has not set a target launch date for Artemis 2 but has said the mission could launch within the February window. The exact timing will largely depend on the outcome of the rocket fueling test, or wet dress rehearsal, currently slated for February 2.
Anticipation is building as NASA prepares to send a team of astronauts back to lunar space for the first time in over half a century. The Artemis 2 crew—and the historical artifacts they’re bringing with them—will journey farther from Earth than any have gone before.
